A tall, strange sepulchral fellow he was: eyes deeply set, skull almond-shaped, arms and legs akimbo and mad hair sproinging in all directions when he played. He looked even stranger while wearing a nun’s habit, which sometimes he did in his heyday: the late ’70s and early ’80s.
He had crazy fingers and crazy legs and jumpsuits too, tight to the nards. Some said “Zappa,” while others said “Bowie,” but that was only an outline of the sketch. Dude was from his own planet; of that, they were sure.
It’s hard to measure the effect of Max Webster — Kim Mitchell’s post-Sarnia Toronto quartet — on Toronto music without having been among the affected. But let me try. Max were as stoned as they were smart; as rough as they were refined. They were as 4/4 as they were 7/13, as punk as they were prog. In a word, they were everything, and for a legion of post-’60s kids whose musical consciousness was only then starting to expand, to be filled with such wild innovation was to be bent just right.
Barenaked Ladies, Change of Heart, 13 Engines, Lowest of the Low, Rheostatics (my old band) were all the spawn of Max, who made audiences laugh and yowl as they made them pause in wonder, equal parts tightrope zany and tightrope dangerous. At the vanguard was the sinewy guitarist who never made you feel embarrassed by his virtuosity, best evinced on songs like “The Party” from Mutiny Up My Sleeve, or the title track from High Class in Borrowed Shoes.
Kim’s songs — abetted by Pye Dubois’ cartoon chemistry class words — were labyrinthine without being bewildering, committed without being didactic. Many performers have had our city’s rock ’n’ roll tag pinned to their shirt, but few were ever as totemic as the original Toronto Tonto.
Celebrated for his singularity, Kim made being weird cool. There would be no now without him or his first, great band.